A Touch of Suspiria
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Spoilers for "Caretaker" and for "Cold Fire," Suspiria learns about her mate's death...


Disclaimer - I don't own Star Trek Voyager.

Please tell me what you think, and thanks for your continued support.

* * *

A Touch of Suspiria.

Suspiria felt her mate's death the moment it happened.

The first thing she felt had been pain, from him, and it was so strong she felt herself almost being pushed out of Exosia when the pain affected her own mind and made it difficult for her to concentrate, but she managed to regain control over her form long enough before she could concentrate on what she had just experienced. It had taken her a while to work out what it was, she was in such shock by the sudden feeling of wrongness and the sheer pain she felt it took her a while before she realised the connection she had with her mate was gone. It sent the Nacene traveller into a blind panic as she tried to work out what was wrong, but then she realised her mate was dead.

Members of their long-lived race were connected to their mates on a level beyond the comprehension of the other carbon-based bipedal species in the numerous galaxies, but the connection was aided by the addition of the layer of subspace known as Exosia to Tanis and the other Ocampans on the array she had constructed for them to live on while they pushed themselves to become better than they had been since her people had turned their homeworld into a desert without any way to repair it.

Suspira remembered that time only too well. She remembered how their expedition leader had felt truly guilty by what had happened to the atmosphere of the planet, and they had constructed an underground city in order to house the Ocampan survivors and give them access to the only remaining water on the planet so they could survive, while setting up a space station nearby in order to provide them with energy supplies. Suspiria had always felt her people had made a fatal mistake there; she could understand and appreciate the need to care for the Ocampans, but to indirectly make the Ocampans depend on both her and her mate to the point where they refused to do anything meaningful with the resources of the city they had available to expand their knowledge, or to make something of themselves by practicing and expanding their already amazing psychic abilities which they had forgotten about, was asking for trouble.

Her mate was not going to protect them forever. At some point, he would die, and they had been among the oldest of their expedition when they had arrived in this galaxy centuries ago. While she was wracked with grief at her loss, she instantly pushed the memories of their arguments over how they had handled the Ocampan people out in favour of looking at the good times they'd shared. But the bad memories would never go away. She had seen the amount of damage her mate had caused, and she had become bored with being tied to one place when there was an entire galaxy around her. It had all culminated in an argument with her mate, and she had left the array and took a number of Ocampans with her in order to help them evolve into something better than what was on their planet, and to make them reach their potential and help him to relearn how to use their cognitive psychic abilities which they had stopped using long ago.

She had always felt contempt for her mate for making the Ocampans servile.

But when they had parted ways, they had known something important; they had still and would always be mated with each other; she knew he was still alive, and that had been the only reassurance she'd had he was around.

Indeed, when she had left the Ocampan homeworld with the group of Ocampans with her and had constructed the new array where they would live their lives safely in a remote corner of the galaxy, there would be times she would concentrate and reach out and feel the reassurance of her mate when she became too lonely.

Suspiria had been waiting for the death of her mate for a long time. She had been able to sense it across the vastness of space though for beings like the Nacenes, it was easy for her to get to without resorting to the warp-drive propelled ships races like the Kazon, the Voth, or the Hazari used.

But when his death occurred, Suspiria had been taken by surprise when it had happened. Her mind was swamped with images, the sound of voices, thoughts, and it took some time for her natural telepathic barriers to compensate, but the Nacene was so dazed by the influx of information it took her a while until she was able to concentrate again.

While she tried to recover from the pain she had just experienced at the passing of her mate, she reached out and touched the minds of the Ocampans on the array - usually she would only make contact with Tanis, though she was more than happy to reach out to anybody on the station should they need her though she usually encouraged the Ocampans to strive for answers on their own and call upon her for aid if they had problems of their own, but this was a set of unusual circumstances so the Nacene was desperate - and she wasn't very gentle with the contact either; she was too shocked by what she had just experienced to really go for the subtle approach this time.

_"My mate is dead,_" she began without preamble, "I am going away for a brief time in order to find out what happened."

One of the Ocampans replied to her._ "But Suspiria, I thought your mate was already in the process of dying-?"_ She listened to the scolding he received over the connection, but she didn't really care - his tactless attitude alone warranted some kind of punishment, but after a moment she spoke over the squabbling Ocampans.

_"Yes, but still…,"_ she said over the connection, letting the turmoil of her mate's death, the influx of thought and feeling she had felt over a connection that had been intact for centuries when she had decided to leave when she had become so tired of how her mate could not see for himself he was making the Ocampans on their homeworld depend on him to the point where they would not even do anything without asking themselves if that was what he wanted rather than doing it for themselves.

Suspiria sighed mentally over the connection. _"His death throes, the images I've received….something happened on his array… others were involved."_

Over the connection, Suspiria showed the Ocampans what she had experienced. She remembered how awed the Ocampans she had removed from the homeworld and brought them to this part of the galaxy where they could grow on their own had been of her, to help them strive to become something greater than their cousins on their planet, especially when she had reached out and touched their minds.

At first those Ocampans had been just as dependent on her and her mate, but over the decades as new generations were born and replaced the ones before, the Ocampans on the second array in this little galaxy had become modern examples of what their people had once been, the type of people that had attracted the interest of the Nacenes long ago when their expedition arrived here.

Images of a number of groups of people from different parts of the galaxy that had been swept close to the Caretaker's array entered the awareness of both Suspira and the Ocampan population on the station. Suspiria felt herself becoming exasperated when she watched the ships being dragged close to the array, the desperate feelings from her mate a mere shadow, but still noticeable. She saw images of aliens she had seen when she had explored the galaxy when she had left her mate after she had become tired of caring for the Ocampans and decided to explore before she returned, though she never had, undergoing medical examinations that were extremely in-depth and quite invasive.

Suspiria was surprised by the thoughts she felt that came with the memories which the pictures were. Frustration, hope, desperation, annoyance, resignation, and regret. She had problems working out what those emotions were for, but what she had problems understanding was why her mate was dragging those aliens across the galaxy in the first place.

As each new ship appeared Suspiria's mind was awash with questions. What was he doing? Why was he kidnapping those people, subjecting them to those experiments, and discarding them without a moments thought? It made no sense to her, but now she knew what her mate had been doing, and what that closed off part of their connection had been.

But now there would never be any answers to those questions.

Her mate was dead.

With each new ship, however, Suspiria became aware of something serious.

As a Nacene, her abilities to manipulate subspace mentally were formidable enough, but the array her mate had used augmented the ability to manipulate subspace, and with each ship that was brought close to the array she could see instinctively the displacement wave which was dragging the ships it was gradually losing a lot of power. A visible example of her mate's impending death.

Finally, she saw the last two ships. She saw their examinations, and witnessed for herself the two bipeds sent to the Ocampan homeworld for them to die peacefully as a result of their invasive examinations (Suspiria decided to examine the memories of those examinations in more detail now she was busily filing them away in her mind, she wanted to find out what her mate was doing before his death), only in the end to be confronted by a woman wearing a black and red uniform, escorted by several others wearing similar clothes or wearing a different outfit.

Suspiria felt nothing but loathing for the Kazon-Ogla, along with a healthy dose of contempt when images showing Kazon ships landing on the surface of the Ocampan homeworld and forming a very small settlement, though what they planned to do with it, she had no idea. There was no way they could grow anything, given the only natural sources of water were deep down inside the planet, and only the Ocampa could reach through to those sources, so unless they planned to build a hydroponic garden to grow their own food, the Kazon would not be there long, but it was more likely they were hoping to scavenge technology again.

It was telling her mate was losing his touch; in the past, the sheer power of the array would have been enough to destroy any hostile race that appeared. She remembered once how a Vidiian expedition looking for mineral deposits were swept away from the planet, and thrown 20,000 light years. The next ship to arrive was simply destroyed by the array.

But now… seeing the Ogla on the Ocampan homeworld was worrying, and she knew it was her duty to clean up the mess left by her peer.

The reaction the Ocampans' she had brought with her three-hundred years before was immediate and predictable.

_"KAZON! On our world…!"_

_"Suspiria, you must do something…!:"_

_"Can they reach through to our cousins, Suspiria?"_ Someone asked her, but someone else interrupted, someone who remembered their history lessons about what the Nacene had done to protect the Ocampa from the dangers of the galaxy before they would be able to grow as a race, though her mate had never realised the need for him to step aside and let them grow into their own destinies.

_"No, don't forget there is a barrier that stops the Kazon from breaking through. If they touch it, they will die. Our people are still safe,"_ the Ocampan said, though there was a twinge of uncertainty that came over the telepathic link.

Suspiria didn't bother answering the questions nor did she try to reassure her subjects of something she didn't know herself; she was sure the security barrier that had been set up as a step to protect the Ocampa though had an unwelcome side-effect of keeping the short-lived race locked inside was still on, and it would protect the Ocampa for many years to come, but she knew from her own knowledge of the technology.

_"I will make sure your people are safe when I visit the homeworld,"_ she promised, knowing that the Ocampans on the array would expect it, though she had planned on making sure those left behind were safe.

Once she felt the relieved feelings from the Ocampa, Suspiria tried to concentrate on the remaining memories she had received with her mate's passing as part of their connection. The link between herself and her mate had sent her a great deal to work with, but his death had fragmented them to the point where they made little sense to her. All she could work out was the bipeds had been trying to persuade her mate to send them home to their part of the galaxy (Suspiria despaired for the intelligence in some of the galaxies she and her people had visited over the years; why they travelled through space in such small ships that were not capable of crossing very impressive distances in a galactic sense, when there was the very real danger of them being snagged by a wormhole, or a subspace tunnel to a location so far away they would never be able to return to their home planets, she did not know), their ship fighting against the Kazon-Ogla, and then…. nothing.

After she had failed to make any real sense of the memories (Suspiria would later surmise that her mate had been under the most tremendous mental strain when he had been dying, only to be hit with devastating agony which meant she could not work out if this new ship was the root cause of her mate's death), she passed them off to the Ocampans with the hope with many more minds connected to her, they might be able to make some sense out of it.

No such luck, but then she wasn't expecting them to either. The connection between mated Nacenes was extremely complicated to understand, but even with her experience of Tanis and the others, there was only so much they could understand for themselves.

* * *

Suspiria was swimming through subspace. On many alien worlds where land and water met, there were creatures in the waters that were specially adapted to living out their whole lives underwater. They lived in the water, they breathed in the water, they hunted in the water with specially enhanced senses so if they hunted in the dead of night when the suns were blocked by nearby planets or moons they would be able to smell out their prey, using bodies that were designed to withstand the incredibly strong pressures that would have crushed a glass bottle into crumbs, capable of travelling at great speed.

Likewise, in the vacuum of space, there were creatures that lived out their lives in space while they absorbed energy from the vacuum, or they consumed asteroids for nutrients but had complete freedom of movement without needing to fear about suffocation.

The Nacene were evolved to live and thrive in subspace, indeed their minds were truly adept at understanding this plane of reality, the formulas other races used to travel through space, manipulated and implemented by technology and with unstable matter/anti-matter collisions for powering it was second nature to her people. But the Nacene's only needed to think of it and they were able to travel incredibly fast, which was one of the reasons why they learnt so much as they travelled through the vastness of space since their bodies could not mutate in the same manner, and their minds were advanced enough to process what they learnt from their travels, if they wanted to take the journey slowly, or they could teleport themselves through subspace. Either way, each method was incredibly fast and since her own ability to 'warp' allowed her to manipulate deeper subspace domains she was able to travel faster than any of the bipeds ships.

For this journey back, Suspiria decided it was a good idea to just take it slowly since it would allow her to process what she had learnt on the passing of her mate. While she had been able to make some degree of sense out of some of it, she was still unsure of what her mate had been doing with those people whom he'd kidnapped. Even more frustrating was she was unable to make any sense of the circumstances of her mate's death, and she could only conclude he must have been under the most heinous stress for that to happen over their connection.

It took Suspiria only three days to return to the familiar patch of space near the Ocampan homeworld, but when she arrived she stretched her senses out. If she had been a biped, her eyes would have widened in horror while she opened up her mouth and gaped in horror. But while she was horrified by what her senses were telling her, there was no denying the truth.

Her mate's array was gone, reduced to a dense cloud of debris ranging from large chunks of explosion-twisted metal to little shards ranging in size to body-size to about the rough size of a grain of sand. Some of the debris was long since gone, blasted by the force of the explosion, but some of it was still nearby, held in the gravitational forces she could feel coming from the Ocampan solar system.

Horror quickly turned into anger when the Nacene 'saw' the familiar sight of a Kazon ship, a small raider by the look of it, slowly studying the remnants of the array that had once stood in this part of space. Suspiria's temper flared, but she quickly caught herself before she lashed out.

Calming herself down with a great effort, Suspiria gently touched the minds of some of the Kazon onboard the ship. The Kazon did not detect her presence, but even if they had she wouldn't have cared. Gently because she knew if she went through their minds too roughly it would let them know something was wrong, and she didn't want that just yet, Suspiria probed their minds. She came away angrily.

The Kazon, despite their primitive, savage, boring little minds, had told her what she had wanted to know.

She now had the final pieces of the puzzle, she knew who had destroyed the array.

A ship called Voyager.

* * *

Ocampa was still the same arid planet it had been for generations. Sadly Suspiria travelled around the planet, her senses studying every square inch of the planet until she was able to see beyond the sub-atomic level, far beyond the capabilities of the best sensors in the universe.

It hasn't changed a bit, she thought to herself sadly as she studied the arid planet, seeing the complete depletion of nucleogenic particles in the atmosphere, and she felt the familiar guilt she had been sharing with the rest of her expedition when they realised the full extent of the disaster when they'd arrived.

The sight and the feel of the arid planet that had once been a lush, lovely world, one of many duplicated across the galaxies and littered around innumerable star systems separated by thousands of light years stabbed Suspiria's being, taunting her, saying _**"You never cared long enough, so why care now?"**_

Suspiria had sometimes asked herself if she had done the right thing removing those Ocampans and moving them far from her mate's smothering influence and reducing them to a pathetic shadow of what they had been centuries ago, instead of simply remaining here and helping her mate. But she had become so tired of this dismal, uninteresting part of space that was so close to Krowtonan Guard territory with Kazon and Vidiian settlements not far either. She had wanted to leave, so she had left.

But seeing the planet again after the death of her mate…. it was making her feel guilty, something she did not like.

Her senses picked up on the small Kazon settlement on the planet, but strangely enough, there were other Kazon groups scattered around the planet. At first, she thought they might just be colonising the planet, taking advantage of her mate's death.

That hypothesis soon died when she scanned the minds of the Kazon down there. They weren't interested in colonising the planet, she realised. They were trying to get down through the barrier, to reach the Ocampans. The Kazon were testing the subterranean areas of the planet, looking for the outskirts and the boundaries of the barrier, so they could find a weakness that they could use to their advantage. They were probing close to the parts of the planet Suspiria sensed had been struck with high-powered weapons, and she was confused and worried when she recognised the 'taste' of the energy as that as the same type of energy their people used.

But…why, why would her mate be firing at the planet?

At first, she wondered if the Kazon had done something to provoke her mate into launching such an attack, and he had reacted in a crude, primitive way to get rid of the vermin, but there was nothing. Her senses didn't pick up any sign of any shattered remnants of prefabricated dwellings, no ships that had been destroyed with enough force for them to be driven into the ground, no organic remains consistent with corpses….

Suspiria was frustrated and annoyed she had not bothered with truly looking through the minds of the Kazon on those ships. If she had just looked for those memories, it would have answered her questions. But all she had were questions, nothing but frustrating questions.

Sighing mentally in her subspace domain, Suspiria probed beneath the surface of the planet, digging through her memory for the basic location of the Ocampan city and when she found it she was relieved the Ocampans were still alive. The first emotion she felt from them was loss, a great loss, it was such a great feeling even she reeled at the sensation of it out of reflex, but she quickly regained her control and probed again, feeling the sense of confusion as the Ocampans went about their daily lives.

The next emotion was worse. Fear, the Ocampans were afraid of everything, the future.

They knew the Kazon were looking for them, and without the protection of their Caretaker, they knew they wouldn't stand a chance. The guilt Suspiria was feeling receded somewhat, replaced by anger.

_What were you thinking about making them so dependent on you? Why couldn't you have wised up to the fact you were causing more harm than good?!_ She thought angrily, and it took Suspiria a moment to renew her calm demeanour, though she was still angry. It wouldn't do to go down to the planet to find some answers to her questions if she was angry.

* * *

Jabin cursed angrily when he listened to the reports from his underlings. _"Idiots, imbeciles, how hard is it to dig deeper in this rock of a planet?"_ he asked himself.

Ever since the death of the entity, Jabin and his branch of the Ogla had been trying to find a way down into the bowels of the planet, trying to reach the water, and the Ocampans. Even when that _**woman**_ Janeway had destroyed the array, the cunning spark in Jabin's mind had given him the idea of recovering some pieces of the array in the hopes of reverse engineering it so then the Ogla would become stronger, or if need be found a new sect with him as the new leader.

But no. The pieces of the array left intact after Voyager had destroyed it with the tricobalt warheads had been useless. Jabin had no idea if the technology needed the entity to work properly, or it for it to work the entire array had to be intact like a giant electrical circuit, but it didn't matter.

For the last few months, Jabin had turned his attention to the planet. He hadn't bothered sending his men to dig through the subterranean barrier, he knew better than to do that. Instead he had ordered them to probe in different places, and hopefully find some supplies of water to make their lives more bearable, and to find out if they could reach the Ocampa without touching the barrier.

Unfortunately, to do that, his men had needed to probe in places where the only obstacles were rock, and they had no idea if they could reach the underground city the Ocampa lived in.

Jabin let out a slow breath, trying to ignore the thirst he was dying of, and he was about to give more orders to his men when he suddenly felt a tight hold around his chest, squeezing him until he choked out a pained breath. Then he was suddenly thrown through the air, and his back and his left side painfully made contact with a wall, and from the sounds of other grunts and cries of pain, he was not the only one.

"Surely I didn't hurt you that hard?" a mocking female voice said rhetorically from in front of him, the voice was somehow ethereal and penetrated deep inside Jabin's skull.

Painfully Jabin looked up and found himself looking at a child wearing a purple dress with hair the same colour as that Ocampan girl Kes, only longer and smoother. But he couldn't say a word to her, his chest still felt as though it had been crushed into pulp.

The child walked closer to the Maje and his men, and Jabin realised with horror the rest of the settlement had been similarly immobilised.

"You are going to answer my questions," the girl said, glaring at Jabin through narrow eyes. Jabin shivered with fear, something he could not believe, never mind understand; he was a Kazon warrior, he had fought against members of his own kind, gone against Krowtonans, dismembered Trabe, and here he was cowering from a child, only he sensed she was not a child.

"What do you want?" Jabin got out when he felt he had recovered enough to speak, hoping to buy time for his men to overpower this little chit.

The child glared at him with a menace that not even the most determined Kazon child could possess, and there was something in her eyes, something old….

"I want to know what happened to my mate's array," she said, "and you are going to tell me now!"

"Your…. mate?" Jabin looked at her in confusion, and a little bit of residual pain.

The child rolled her eyes. "The Ocampans called him 'the Caretaker,'" she replied, spitting the name out with contempt, clearly not thinking much about the title.

Jabin gasped.

The Caretaker had a mate?! He had never imagined or considered he even had one, but he now hoped his men did recover enough to shoot her. His imagination began to wonder... if he could somehow contain her…. With her power, he could rule this part of the galaxy-

The girl's eyes flashed as she glared at him malevolently, and Jabin had the horrible suspicion she knew precisely what he had in mind…

Suddenly Jabin choked as he was lifted slowly into the air, feeling a great pressure wrapped around his throat. His vision began to blur as he found it harder to breathe.

"You filthy primitive!" The entity hissed at him with such power behind her words Jabin felt a pure, primal urge to hide. "Why is it you Kazon cannot stop himself about thinking what you can take!? Do you really think I am stupid?! You cannot subdue me! Even if you tried to send in your pathetic rag-tag fleet of ships, I could rip your minds to pieces! Maybe I should do the universe a favour, and wipe you out! Make the Kazon extinct"

Jabin choked.

She couldn't. It was well within her capabilities to kill the Kazon, remove their taint, their greed, and their aggressiveness, but she could never commit mass genocide. It would attract her people's attention, and they would never hesitate in punishing her if they found she had destroyed an entire species even if it was worth it.

"My mate should have destroyed all of you," the entity went on, walking slowly towards him, "instead he didn't."

A blue pulse of light that was powerful enough to sear through the flesh of any living being cut through the air and struck the entity in the back, but she did not fall to the ground. Jabin lifted his head and found himself staring at one of the youngest of his clans' warriors, looking fearfully at the unharmed entity, and through dim eyes, he looked down at the entity holding him. What he saw terrified him when he saw the expression on the young looking entity's face.

Suddenly the warrior screamed and clutched at his head when there was a shrieking sound as his skull was crushed in a bloody shower. Jabin meanwhile stared at the body with disbelieving, uncomprehending shock. The entity was able to kill a fully grown warrior without a thought!

The child-entity drew Jabin's attention back onto herself. "That was extremely stupid, but what I've come to expect from your worthless race!" she said angrily. "You know something, I have lost my patience! Tell me something, Kazon, do you know what it feels like to be mind-raped?"

Jabin didn't even have time to scream.

* * *

The Kazon-Ogla on the planet was dead, but Suspiria was satisfied because she now had everything she wanted to know. She was surprised her mate had sent more energy pulses to the Ocampan city and then had fired the weapons at the planet. The Kazon had gone to the array, like predators sensing weakness, in order to overpower the defensive systems of the array, board it and take whatever technology was onboard.

But Voyager and another, much smaller, but insignificant ship, had intervened and had engaged in a battle, but the array had been destroyed. Voyager was responsible for the death of her mate because he hadn't sent them home!

As she walked amongst the ruins of the Kazon settlement she had just destroyed, not once sparing a look at the rapidly cooling corpses, and she walked away from the bodies and she focused her mind on her true form, and felt her disguise melt away and she returned to her real form as she burrowed down into subspace.

It had been many centuries since she had visited the Ocampan city. Unlike her mate, Suspiria had routinely visited the city to see how their charges were doing, but also to interact with them. Her mate had never liked her habit of doing that. He had believed the best way the Ocampans should live was for him to let them live their lives without him, ironic because the Ocampans had grown dependent on him.

The moment she arrived in the heart of the Ocampan city, her arrival triggered a great wave of such surprise since she made no effort to conceal her presence from the Ocampans.

She opened telepathic contact with the residents of the city, letting them know on all psychic levels who she was. The Ocampans, unused to such contact, recoiled slightly, but she moved gently through their minds, addicting them to the power. She had done this many centuries before, to Tanis and the others' ancestors. _"Do not worry, I am here. My mate and I have taken care of you in the past, but I left you many centuries ago, now I have returned. I have great plans for you."_

Suspiria was telling the Ocampans the truth, but it was time to be brutally honest with them.

_"If you are thinking I will rebuild the array and carry out the same meaningless tasks of providing your city with energy, think again. It is long past time your people grew, and become more than you have been for generations. Three centuries ago, I took members of your people with me, and I taught them to solve their own problems and to teach them how to become strong. I shall give you the same gift, whether you like it or not." _She told them telepathically.

Suspiria went silent for a moment when she felt an Ocampan with dark, receding hair, an old one by the feel of his mind and a long way into his unexplainably short lifespan and long since past his elogium period, approach with a reverence that made her feel ill.

_"Caretaker,"_ the Ocampan said quietly with a reverential attitude that made Suspiria sigh as she studied him, he was younger than Tanis, much younger, and his hair was beginning to grey._ "We are grateful for your arrival, we have been lost without guidance for months-."_

Suspiria telepathically silenced him. _"You are definitely going to get guidance from me," she said aloud, making it clear to the Ocampans she was serious now. "But not the guessing game type of guidance where you try to work out what it is I want. I make it clear to the Ocampans I interact with what I want them to do, whether they like it or not. Now, escort me to the power storage plant. I wish to see how much energy stored, and along the way I want you to tell me everything you can about how my mate died…"_

As the Ocampan she quickly learnt was named Toscat walked alongside her with a distance that spoke volumes of how reverential he was of her though his attitude of how delighted to be chosen to escort her to the planet, Suspiria wondered how long it would take before she learnt what she wanted.

Unfortunately, Toscat quickly tried her patience._ "Caretaker,"_ he said telepathically with a practice that showed her this was one Ocampan who was more comfortable speaking telepathically; it was a bit sad in her mind he was denying himself two planes of knowledge, but that was typical of this breed of Ocampa. _"What do you wish us to do? For many years we have tried to decipher your…. mates' wishes,_" he stumbled over the word 'mate' as if he was finding it difficult to believe his Caretaker had even had such a thing.

Suspiria stopped and turned to face Toscat. "The first thing I want you to do is not to call me 'Caretaker,'" she said aloud, "my name is Suspirira, and this is the start of a beautiful relationship between myself, and all Ocampans."

* * *

Despite returning to the Ocampan homeworld after a few centuries of neglecting it in favour of finding something more interesting to do, Suspiria was still interested in Voyager, this ship that her mate had brought to the array.

Granted the Kazon didn't know precisely what they had done to her mate, but that did not matter. In the months since the terrible shockwave where she discovered and experienced her mate's death, Suspiria began to listen to the rumours spread about Voyager of how they had killed her mate. Anger warred with her good sense, and she began looking for the ship.

Little was she to know they were looking for her as well.

* * *

Until the next time..


End file.
